Details

Description:
When I tried to set up the default configuration of my printer, so that langugage type sticks at Postscript, I can't run spadmin to do it. It says: "No printers can be installed, because the file system is read-only."

For clarity purpose I trace the three main syscall (read/write/open). Cf file attached.
I copy/paste because 2>&1 weirdly did not work with strace output.

Wrt the file:
--> I got a printers.tdb in /var/lib/samba/printing
--> I do have an open cups socket:
[raimondeaug@hades cups]$ file /var/run/cups/cups.sock
/var/run/cups/cups.sock: socket
--> I do not have a .Xdefaults, neither in root directory nor in user directory

Same problem here, but also a solution!
Under https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55962#c16 a FreeBSD-guy proposed to to compile with the "--with-ppds" option. I cross-checked the gentoo-ebuild (http://data.gpo.zugaina.org/gentoo/app-office/libreoffice/libreoffice-4.0.0.3.ebuild) - they simply omit the "--without-ppds" option in the ebuild.
So just comment out the "--without-ppds" line in PKGBUILD and recompile libreoffice-common and the read-only filesystem error is gone!